Wednesday Racket (OT) 6.13

Howdy, Tribe. I've been struggling with the blogging software for a few hours and lost this post a little while ago (bummer), but thankfully it's an OT table-setter, so no earth-shattering content was lost. In fact, for most of this morning I was editing a Tennis Life piece for the U.S. Open September issue of Tennis, by an author who should be familiar to most of you -our own Todd and in Charge.

TaiC has two sons who play junior tennis in South Florida, and his TL column is going to about an encounter with an icon of the pro game- a meeting that took place at a junior event. It's a well-written, fun read. The Tribe, on the whole is a literate - and literary - bunch. I haven't mentioned it before, but another regular poster wrote a TL piece that is running in our July, Wimbledon issue - which should hit the mailboxes and newsstands any day now. That one is about a surprise chance to see one of the most enchanted Wimbledon finals of all time - the 2001 championship match between Goran Ivanisevic and Pat Rafter. And I have two other TW readers in the pipeline with TLs as well . . .

In another Tennis-related piece of news, a blog created and supervised by our Instruction guru, Tony Lance, has just won an on-line excellence award from TheMorningNews.org. He scored this coup with a pair of blogs written by recreational players hoping to improve their games - and tournament performances. One of the bloggers is Joe, from San Jose, Ca., the other is Kellie, from Olathe, Kan. As the folks at TheMorningNews put it, "We love seeing the blog format used intelligently by big publishers: appropriately modeled after a magazine's purpose rather than pelleted from the masthead."

Congrats, Joe, Kellie and Tony - those of you who play the game recreationally might want to drop by to see what the game plan is for these two blogging weekend warriors.  I'm working on a Federer-related story  that I'll post tomorrow, after I have a conversation with a source in England. There's nothing cloak or dagger about this piece - it isn't going to be a breaking news "exclusive", but it will address an aspect of The Mighty Fed and his career that hasn't been really looked at in sufficient detail, with an appropriately discriminating mind.

Also, on the day of the men's final at Roland Garros, three of us sat down and had a little chat with Justine Henin, and I'll post an item on that, too, before the end of the week. Justine, to my mind, was the big winner at Roland Garros this year. Around the office here in New York, I heard from a number of people that her performance, and the moving tale of her reunion with her family, had served to make them see Justine through more compassionate eyes. I think the Comments section on the last, major post on Justine at this weblog also reflected a similar willingness to cut Henin some slack and perhaps even to let bygones be bygones. Never underestimate our capacity for forgiveness, or tales of redemption or rehabilitation.

Feel free to use this post to talk about the Artois Championships, or any other tennis related chatter. I'll have a new post up first thing in the morning where you can talk about the goings on in Queens and Birmingham.

Looks like Ivo Karlovic, one of TW's favorite underdogs, is rolling at Queens, Or, as someone once said, Toto, I have a funny feeling we're not at Roland Garros anymore!